It is well knowun to use silver halide color photographic materials to form desired images by exposure and development. In many cases, a system employing a light-sensitive silver halide emulsion and a so-called dye-forming coupler capable of forming a dye by reaction with an oxidized form of an aromatic primary amine developing agent (hereinafter referred to as a "coupler" in short) is utilized. Above all, a combination of a yellow coupler, a cyan coupler and a magenta coupler is generally used in the color photographic materials.
Among these, magenta dyes obtained from a 5-pyrazolone-type coupler, which has mainly been used as a magenta coupler, have serious problems with regard to to color-reproducibility since magenta dyes show multiple absorption near 430 nm and that the leg portion curve in a long wavelength range is dull.
In order to overcome these defects, pyrazoloazole-type couplers have been developed, as described, for example, in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 162548/84, No. 171956/84, No. 33552/85 and No. 43659/85 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,061,432 (The term "OPI" as used herein means an "unexamined published application".). Magenta dyes obtained by coupling of this type of coupler with an oxidized form of an aromatic primary amine developing agent do not show any multiple absorption near 430 nm in an ethyl acetate solution but may exhibit a magenta color of high purity, and the leg portion curve of the absorption in a long wavelength range is good, which is a characteristic feature of these magenta dyes. In addition, the color images thus obtained have good light-fastness.
On the other hand, it is extremely important for silver halide photographic materials to have stable photographic characteristics in view of different variations of development conditions. In a conventional developing process, variations among various factors such as the amount of photographic materials treated, the amount of developers to be replenished, the temperature of the developers and the treating time occur frequently, and these variations will affect the photographic characteristics of the treated photographic materials such as the sensitivity, gradation or color density thereof.